AIB has stopped appearing in my gmail. I can see it loading and the AIB icon appears at the bottom of the left column, but no views, no ability to see any functionality of the extension. I sent in the debug report. Can you offer any help? I'm using the current version 5.0.11.

Same here. It seems stuff always breaks down on the weekend, when there is zero support. This one of many instances in which things are not working on Monday morning and nothing gets done until the UK wakes up. Maybe make sure you also have some support on the weekend, guys?

Thanks for encouraging debate over this - I agree the pattern does seem to be for changes to appear over the weekend.

In this case, Lisa did make me aware on Sunday (support is normally running - albeit in a reduced capacity - over the weekend; but it's only in extreme cases like this that development support is also available), and did everything possible to keep people in the loop, but the change didn't come to my test account until the early hours of Monday UK time.

I'm not sure we could have been faster this time, other than requesting access to someone's affected account on a Sunday, which is a consideration.

I agree - my business does not stop working on the weekend, and many of the services I pay for are there to support me if they break on the weekend. This does not seem acceptable - maybe if this was a "Freemium" service, but "Why we’re raising the price and dropping freemium"

I can absolutely relate to your frustration here. I've been in many a situation where I've worked the weekend, and felt powerless because it seems no one else is.

I replied to mterkeurst above: essentially I'm don't think we could have gone faster on this particular issue, but one option would have been to request access to an affected account, so I could understand what Gmail had changed sooner - and that's something we're now considering.

I have just a few days left of my trial, and this "wait till Monday" approach does not bode well with me. Like many others, I work over the weekend and this was a major setback. IQtell has great customer and technical support...even on the weekends.

Is that what I can come to expect with a premium service like this? If we pay, support should be 365 days a year.

But yes, I am sorry - I do entirely understand the frustration - and with every major event like this I try to work out how we can avoid the particular scenario again.

In this case, I think being bolder with approaching people for access to their affected account over the weekend (I normally hesitate because it feels like we're imposing upon them), so I can experience the problem first hand and fix it immediately, will be the best step forward.

It would be great if there were a better way to notify people about issues like this, so that we don't have to take the time to send in bug reports for issues that are already known. It's something I'd expect as you begin to raise annual subscription prices.

48 hours to respond, analyse, develop, test, and release over the weekend due to a dependency on an external service that changes without notice sounds great to me for a team of this size. You get personal support and commitment instead of robotized systems that relay you from one happy-music playing infinite loop to the, um, next.

I agree. However, what's a bit scary is that Andy and team are completely exposed to Google's release schedule. What if they hadn't had this Gmail change available in their accounts for a week? Then, some percentage of customers would be out of luck for at least that length of time. What if the Gmail change is dramatic, but rolled out to users slowly? This is a very realistic possibility. See this story for what may be coming soon:

Fair points, I am not familiar with the Gmail release schedule and whether they actually publish one. I was assuming the worst case: The can change anything, any time, and don't give notice.

AIB would do well to have the ability to release to individual users.
And when it comes to the big Gmail changes you mentioned, I guess that is a good opportunity for AIB to show that they plan ahead :-)

Thank you Jens - truly, it's warm words like that that have kept us motivated year in, year out :)

And you're correct, Google continuously release updates with no warning. And worse, they tend to do partial global rollouts, so a certain set of users get an update that perhaps some other users don't see for days/weeks. But there's a break in the clouds because...

mz - you're forgetting the very thing you yourself have participated in! It's incredibly effective for us to be able to (safely, with the owner's permission) access an affected Gmail account with our debugging tools and fix it right there and then. Countless times this has helped us fix something before it reaches the general population.

One of the reasons it didn't work out this time is because the problem occurred over the weekend, and I've never wanted to impose on customers during the weekend before.

But I realise from this discussion that people would have been very open to helping over the weekend, as many were working, so now that's an option in the future.

(I've explained this to mz, but for everyone else's benefit: We've tried developing relationships with Google before, to give us the earliest access to new features, but it never went smoothly).

I didn't forget. :-) I just know that depending on users to make their accounts available is still schedule dependent. I agree it might be the best approach given the circumstances, though of course if you could make progress with Google that would be tons better for everyone involved.

Perhaps you should offer some sort of feedback program where users can opt in to help you with bug fixes. In exchange, give them a discount or free months on their subscription. There's already a built-in incentive for people to help you to resolve bugs, especially people who want the bugs fixed fast. However, having a formal list of many people ready and willing to provide access to their accounts, would probably streamline the process. If you have to wait or feel guilty about asking for access, that's not optimal. Just an idea....

Just adding my pennies worth. I would rather do what I can to help sorting out a problem than sit waiting for someone else to cure it.

Also, I think things went reasonably smoothly sorting out the problem - So well done Activeinbox.

It can't be easy for a small company piggybacking its product onto the back of Google. However, it is extensions like AIB which make Google's base product, Gmail 'work' for a really diverse client base, and I wonder how many other extensions were caught out by the Gmail changes... Perhaps it is Google that needs to pay more attention.

I'm having the same issue. I thought dealing with Wordpress updates was a pain. I can't imagine how difficult your life must be whenever Gmail makes some kind of arbitrary change. Thanks for the excellent service.